ALBANY -- The Delaware Station post office, presumed doomed as part of a national postal service consolidation, has won at least a temporary reprieve.

The Delaware Avenue mail facility, one of scores targeted for closure, was not shuttered for good Friday as planned but instead will stay open until further notice while the U.S. Postal Service transitions to a new postmaster general, spokeswoman Maureen Marion said.

Marion said via e-mail that the delay isn't just limited to Albany. The Postal Service, she said, has "been instructed to postpone actions such as consolidations that were scheduled in the first part of January."

But Marion stressed that the stay does not represent a reversal of the decision to close the post office between Hurlbut and Bertha streets in a bid to stem system-wide losses in the billions of dollars.

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"It is a delay to our schedule, not a change of direction or decision," Marion said, noting that the postponement is also related to "postal workload during the peak season."

A small sign taped to the door of the building at 332 Delaware Ave. announcing the change underlined the word "temporary."

Marion said there's no new closure date, adding that more information is expected by mid-January.

Still, the reprieve was welcome news to those who have and continue to fight to keep the facility open and in a city where the last year has been marked by the loss of a number of neighborhood institutions, including the Washington Avenue YMCA, New Covenant Charter School and -- earlier this week -- Public Bath No. 2.

The Postal Service is contesting the appeal, arguing that -- as a postal station, not a full-fledged post office -- the Delaware outpost isn't subject to the Postal Regulatory Commission's jurisdiction.

U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko, an Amsterdam Democrat who district includes Albany, has written to the regulatory commission -- which disagrees with the postal service's position -- asking the commission to honor the appeal. The commission has set a mid-February deadline to decide whether or not the Postal Service followed appropriate procedures and fully evaluated the impacts of the closure.

Neighbors and local business owners insist it didn't -- chief among their complaints being that the closure study was done while Delaware Avenue was undergoing a $16 million overhaul that snarled traffic and hurt even the strip's most popular businesses.

"If we completely lose what's great about living in the city," McNeilly said, "then you're not going to have people living in the city."

In 2009, the Postal Service targeted Delaware Station -- and six others in the Capital Region -- for closure to save an estimated $95,558 annually -- despite the fact that numbers provided by the postal service during the closure appear to indicate the branch makes money.

Some 700 postal sites across the country were initially at risk of being shuttered. That list was later trimmed to three in the Albany area, all of them in the city: Delaware Station, Pine Hills and Patroon Creek on Broadway in North Albany.

Decisions on Pine Hills and Patroon Creek have yet to be made.

Jordan Carleo-Evangelist can be reached at 454-5445 or by e-mail at jcarleo-evangelist@timesunion.com